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January We’ve been wondering why the Democrats talk a good line of opposition to the occupation of Iraq, all President’s crimes, and, especially, torture. There’s a lot of sound and fury, but when it comes to denying a Bush Attorney General nominee, or exploring impeachment, Democratic leadership caves in to whatever Bush and Cheney want. From the beginning of her leadership, in spite of protests and a resolution this year led by good ole Dennis Kucinich, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, “impeachment is off the table.” She’s even tamed firebrand John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. We now realize that Democrats who were elected to represent us have settled in as managers. We’ve learned that “managing” means calculating how representatives should vote based upon re-election prejections so that any final tally produces the result the managers need without threatening election prospects and corporate sponsors. Democratic leaders keep talking about how they must manage the House and Senate. Yet, in the process, their “leadership” is so far behind the progressive views of the majority of Americans that dwindling public respect for the Democratic Congress reflects only the fact that it appears less bad than corrupt, corporate Republican alternatives. A December expose in the Washington Post reveals another possible explanation for all the tough Democratic talk that lacks real substance. It helps us understand why Attorney General nominee Mukasey -- who couldn’t say waterboarding was torture for fear that criminal indictments would result against Bush-Cheney -- was a shoe-in after all the anti-torture posturing by Democratic leaders. In September 2002, we now learn, two Democrats, Nancy Pelosi and Bob Graham, were among four members of Congress briefed by the Bush administration in secret about their use of torture as part of a CIA program. Waterboarding was one of the techniques presented during “a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques investigators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.” Staff attendees report that no objections were raised and “the briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough.” There were about 30 such private briefings during 2002 and 2003 with only one formal objection raised. As of this writing, Pelosi has declined to comment. One congressional source said she did recall discussions about “enhanced interrogation” and that she raised no objections. Tell me it isn’t so, but one of the real dangers of pursuing critiques and even accusations of crimes by this administration is that Democratic leadership might also be implicated. The administration’s claims that congressional representatives were informed about, and approved of, torture now seem to be accurate. In some ways this seems like blackmail, doesn’t it? But as a result, we have another case where politicians are going to have to create other persona because their past has been so wrong. Both the Republican and Democratic frontrunners for their presidential nominations have had to create persona involving finessing their pasts and reconstructing their present. Flip-flopping? Spinning? Downplaying? Shooting the messenger? Falsifying? You bet. They’ve learned that the media is looking for an image not a person. So, they have staff to help them create, develop, test how they better appear. One exception is Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. He’s been right all along. On Iraq, on torture, on domestic eavesdropping, on the last two presidential elections, on administration crimes, on LGBT issues. You name it. Even as Mayor of Cleveland in the late seventies when he stood up against big utility and bank pressure to privatize the city’s electric utility and lost re-election for it, the result was Clevelanders now realize that he had their interests at heart. They can see it in their low utility bills today. Twenty years later Cleveland’s city council honored him for the "courage and foresight" to stand up to the banks and for saving the city an estimated $195 million between 1985 and 1995. He’s been reelected to represent Ohio’s tenth district five times. Kucinich doesn’t have to create a covering image of himself, a role for TV. So he doesn’t. He just presents himself as who he is, a plain human being with drive, specific programs, and even flaws. The media not only ask, “but can he win?” They provide us with image-based reasons that he can’t. Not only is it his height or haircut. It’s that he refuses to put on an image. He votes consistently with his conscience. And he has nothing to hide. The media ignore him – he gives them no show-biz image to hype. The Democratic Party’s image consultants, -- making tons of cash every election cycle creating candidates -- wish he’d just go away. The other Democratic candidates can’t keep up with his truthfulness. They’re too busy fudging, flipping, polling, and corporate fund-raising like good Republicans. And maybe we don’t want another president like Jimmy Carter. He was the last of the real human beings. We’ve been told to believe that though he was, and is, a great guy, he made a lousy president for these very same reasons. He was no actor. His actor successor, Ronald Reagan, changed that. He skyrocketed the national debt, still raised taxes, never spoke the word AIDS while tens of thousands died, and let our infrastructure suffer. How can a man I remember as a terrible president now be someone every Republican candidate invokes with awe and reverence? It’s the image, man! And the public gets caught up in all this hype and hoopla. We’re attracted to political images just as we’re attracted to other actors, glitzy sports celebrities, and show-biz creatures, like Paris Hilton or Barry Bonds. Real humans are out of luck when it comes to support from our institutions. Our institutions have been pushing inhuman roles – gender, consumer, warrior -- on us for generations to keep profits soaring. But don’t we the people feel down deep somewhere that the ones who are imageless human beings are right? Are we too afraid to say so? Too afraid we’ll not be in sync with the crowd? Too afraid we’ll look strange if we do? Can an open human being be president? Why not? But only if we demand it. © 2009 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources
Robert N. Minor is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org
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